


Perchance To Dream

by Syntax



Category: Elder Scrolls
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Memory Loss, No Dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:02:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25372828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syntax/pseuds/Syntax
Summary: He wakes up, hazy, aching, and feeling like a round peg some impatient child had brute-forced into a square hole.He remembers nothing at all.
Relationships: Alessia/Morihaus (Elder Scrolls), Huna/Pelinal Whitestrake
Kudos: 19





	Perchance To Dream

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [all of this can be broken](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22220869) by [4wholecats](https://archiveofourown.org/users/4wholecats/pseuds/4wholecats). 



> i initially wrote the beginning of this for one of my paladins, then decided i didn't like it. i didn't want it to go to waste though, so when i was looking for what to write today and remembered that i wanted to do a thing about pelinal, i realized i could use it to show him waking up after the first madness.
> 
> this was inspired by 4wholecats' depiction of alessia and morihaus dealing with pelinal's first madness, but does not directly follow along the world they presented in their story.

He wakes up, hazy, aching, and feeling like a round peg some impatient child had brute-forced into a square hole. He's in a fairly lit room where the sun is shining down through a lone window, resting on a pile of hay, garbed only in a heavy woolen blanket. He shields his eyes against the light and wraps his limbs more tightly around himself. He goes back to sleep.

He wakes up again, perhaps minutes or perhaps hours later, to the hand of a familiar figure on his shoulder gently rocking him back and forth. He looks up at the figure through bleary eyes. She look back down at him with distinctly tired ones.

He knows this woman. He knows he does. But his mind is foggy, and his thoughts are dull. Whoever she is, the mystery of her identity will not be solved so quickly.

She asks him how he is feeling. He is feeling absolutely horrible, thank you. She asks him how much he remembers. 

He remembers nothing at all.

Reality comes back to him slowly, in bits and pieces. Memory comes back slower, and much more haphazardly. He remembers the war before he remembers his name, and he remembers how to tell time long before he remembers what month it is. Beyond that, he can't be very sure of much more.

He's given clothes to wear and food to eat by passing soldiers seeking to check in on him, and he wades through the day like a man who cannot swim would wade through water. His body doesn't feel like it belongs to him. His limbs don't want to move correctly, responding to his whims at belated times and in odd ways. It's a struggle to eat. It's a struggle to sit upright. It's an even greater struggle to stand, so he just doesn't. Whatever it was that he must be recovering from, taking a tumble because he was too stubborn to remain seated would hardly aid said recovery.

The woman who visited him earlier returns to speak with him, or at the very least try to. As slow as his mind is, his tongue is slower. He stumbles his speech and forgets his words. He does not have much in the way of answers for her questions anyways. She still looks tired. He still feels bleary. She wishes him luck and speed on his recovery before leaving the room.

He goes back to sleep.

He dreams of nothing. There's a haze of red, and a rush of emotions, but he can't rightly tell what they are. When he wakes for the third time that day, the room is no longer fairly lit, and the sun just barely visible through the window hangs low along the horizon.

There's a bull in the room now, resting quietly on the ground beside his pile of hay. For some reason this doesn't surprise him.

The bull looks at him balefully and asks how he feels. For some reason this doesn't surprise him either.

All told, he still feels like shit, but not to as great a degree as he initially did. His head feels lighter, his limbs feel less like foreign objects dubiously linked to his consciousness and more like parts of his own body again.

His mind is still scrambled. He tells the bull this, still not yet sure how he knows such a creature but fully confident the bull will understand. The bull shifts its great wings and sighs deeply in response. It tells him that that might be for the best. He's not quite sure how to respond.

A shaggy-haired face nuzzles gently against him, and he leans into the touch welcomingly.

The bull knows him. He knows the bull in turn. He knows he knows. But the required information refuses to come when bidden, and so he will have to look for it.

With a sigh of his own he repositions himself to rest against the bull's massive form and starts to sift through the rest of his mind.

If he drifts off to sleep for the third time in the process, no one can really blame him.

He wakes for the fourth time to a room in pitch darkness. The pile of hay beneath him is cold in comparison to the heat of his nephew's body against him. He shifts his body slightly and feels another form against his own. He looks down.

The moonlight streaming in through the window is just barely strong enough to make out the form of the Paravania, breathing slowly in deep sleep.

So both of them saw fit to grant him company through the night? How odd. When did that happen?

It takes far longer than he would like to find the desired information. Though not as horridly as it was that morning, his mind still isn't as clear as it should be. He feels detached, almost, watching the day's memories pass through his own eyes like an outsider, wondering why such simple tasks were so hard to accomplish or why such simple questions garnered such empty answers. He does not know what affliction has so robbed him of his own body. He does not know why it necessitated the removal of his armor, the quarantining of his form in a more solid structure.

But he does know that he does not need to burden his friends with the guarding of his body when there is a perfectly serviceable tent waiting for him elsewhere in the encampment. Let the lovers rest without his intrusion. They have done enough for him, both on this day and many before.

He rises shakily to his feet and places the woolen blanket around the slave queen's own pallid form. She curls into the blanket almost immediately, clearly grateful for the new warmth. He does not deny the smile that stretches across his face as he pads out of the room into the open air.

The encampment is hardly visible under the pale moonlight. His limbs still remain somewhat unsteady, and his mind too is still somewhat clouded. He walks many circles through mostly-forgotten structures of previous encampments before finally finding the tent he'd claimed when this base was set up.

He lifts the flap of fabric gently and strains his eyes to see. There is nothing inside.

All he can do is stand there dumbly, languid mind struggling to process why the sleeping form of his dear one would not be there to greet him. This was the right tent. He knows this was the right tent. So why...?

In one, brief moment, the uncollected pieces of his memory abruptly slot back into place.

The cry that erupts from him is loud enough to wake the entire encampment.


End file.
